Country Joe McDonald has a weakness. It's not protest songs. Though he proved to be pretty good at that with Country Joe and The Fish during the Vietnam era.

No, the 72-year-old Berkeley resident's Kryptonite is ice cream. And, while Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia is up there — "That sure is good" — McDonald said he'll take on any flavor, any time.

"I'll eat any kind. I've never encountered any ice cream I wouldn't eat. When I was a kid, my dad made it. I love ice cream," he said. "I could lose five pounds if I stopped eating ice cream."

Heck, since he stopped drinking, the Woodstock icon needs some vice. In a 45-minute chat earlier this week, he proved his addiction definitely wasn't technology or anything close to pretentiousness. Not when he found his tongue, stuck it firmly in cheek, and announced he'll perform a "Country Joe Salutes Country Joe" June 22 at the Empress Theatre in Vallejo.

"None of my (five) kids play music, so none will be doing a tribute to me. And I don't think Sting will be doing a tribute to Country Joe," chuckled McDonald, admitting it's all "silly and stupid and funny."

Through an aching back, McDonald still gets out and plays, mostly for benefits.

He figures he's done 3,500 gigs, none as notable as the Woodstock appearance Aug. 15, 1969 when he and the Fish belted out "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" and its catchy "One, two three, what am I fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, next stop is Vietnam ..."

Because Joe slipped a certain four-letter word into the tune, he and the band were actually paid to not perform on the Ed Sullivan Show after they were already booked.

Those were the days. Not that McDonald doesn't have his moments.

"I'm a little bit snarky. That's what people would say. I'm probably a nice guy. But I can be crabby," McDonald said.

Never a social butterfly away from performing, McDonald is at ease on stage, he said.

"I don't care what size of the audience," he said, admitting it "took a long time" before he got into a comfort zone talking to his fans.

"I felt reluctant to do that," he said. "But performing? I couldn't stop. I had an obsession with music."

There's really only been two downtimes when it came to playing, McDonald said: First, when Jerry Garcia died in 1995, and secondly when McDonald stopped drinking.

"That very day Jerry died, I told my wife, 'I'm not going to die on the road' and I put my guitars away and didn't play. And when I quit drinking, I stopped playing for a year."

Fortunately, a friend convinced McDonald to get back out there and play for fun "and I started playing again."

So, of his six guitars he owns, he'll take out his trusty Yamaha FG 150 given to him at Woodstock and tote it around, including his upcoming Vallejo gig. And that's a good thing, said Empress general manager Don Bassey.

"My impression of him as always been that he is a man of passion and compassion, a great storyteller and musician," said Bassey, who first caught McDonald's act in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1970.

"It will be another thrill to see him again in our theater 44 years later," Bassey said. "Joe holds a permanent place in San Francisco rock history."

Rest on laurels? Not McDonald. He'll pack up the guitar and play on the moon if it was a cause that meant something to him.

"I do a lot of benefits," he said. "But I like to do things others won't do."

He recently did a fundraiser to stop the Oakland zoo from expanding. And another show to stop oak trees from being leveled for a Cal-Berkeley athletic facility "for a football team that cannot win a game in a stadium built on a fault line," mused McDonald. "The oak trees were lost and we lost the cause. I've played at a lot of lost causes."

Still, "I like to think globally and act locally," McDonald said, admitting he still carries an "anti-social thing."

"I don't want to put on a monkey suit and shmooze with Angelina Jolie. That creeps me out," he said.